Edtech Startup Edurev Gets accepted To FbStart Program

Gurugram-based edtech startup Edurev has been selected for Facebook’s developer-focused programme “FbStart” which caters to the early-stage, mobile-focused startups.

As part of the programme, the startup will be provided with services & credits worth $40,000. The services include mentorship from Facebook’s engineering teams and services from its partners like Amazon Web Services, Dropbox, Adobe, and MailChimp. Besides partners, it will give free access to more than 25 services including open source tools like React Native, FB Login and Account Kit and App Analytics.

Edurev, an abbreviation for Education Revolution, was launched in 2014 by Kunaal Satija and Hardik Dhamija. An educational network, the platform connects students and teachers with courses and learning material with a crowd-sourced library. The startup was part of Jaarvis accelerator’s first batch in India. It also raised an undisclosed amount of Pre-Series A round in May 2016 from Hyderabad Angel’s Pradeep Reddy Kamasan.

Edurev further plans to scale up in its target market segment of students and academic institutions. As Kunaal said, “Facebook is biggest internet company on the planet and we have looked up to it since the start of our journey. With their marketing support, we can reach almost 8 Mn in traffic from the present 1.5Mn within the next 6 months. And further with the improved infrastructure, we can serve upto 50 schools at one time.’’

Jaspal Sarai, Co-founder and Director, Jaarvis Accelerator further added, “EduRev has matured over the time to be an end to end solution provider for education sector. Most of their competitors are still figuring out the space and are either a ‘Student Management System’ or ‘Learning Management System’ or ‘Content Provider’. However EduRev is a true end to end provider with single platform that enables all of these aspects, hence we are backing this venture as this is the winning formula.”

The platform currently provides more than 300 free courses on the platform and have been claimed to be accessed more than a million times each month now by both students and teachers. Further, its technology is being used at various coaching Institutes and schools via custom tabs to make learning more personalised.

The Indian EdTech market touched $2.5 Bn in 2016 and is poised to grow at 15% over the next three years according to a report by research and advisory firm RedSeer Consulting. Other similar players in this space are Simplilearn, Embibe, Toppr, Upgrad, Byju’s and more.

Facebook launched FbStart in 2014 with an aim to help early-stage mobile startups build and grow their apps. It provides an exclusive community, worldwide events, and mentorship from Facebook to the startups along with $80K in free tools and services.

FbStart includes three tracks, viz., Pre-launch (up to $15K benefits), Bootstrap (up to $30K benefits), and Accelerate (up to $80K benefits). The programme provides free access to more than 25 services including open source tools like React Native, FB Login and Account Kit and App Analytics.

India is the largest market for FbStart outside the US. According to the product partnerships team at Facebook, over 75% of top-grossing apps in India get integrated with Facebook.